The problem with most agreements is that we don’t see them. They just are. Most often we are not aware that what is happening around us is based on an agreement that one could potentially change. It seems that life is “just that way.” In our day-to-day interactions, either at work or at home, we are engaging in a set of agreements and relationships, whether we realize it or not. Sometimes the agreements work, resulting in vibrant experiences and great outcomes, and sometimes they do not, leaving us feeling depleted, fatigued and disappointed about the lousy outcomes.

In addition to shifting agreements in everyday experiences, many of us work to shift agreements in large-scale social change issues, such as renewable energy, food systems, poverty, climate change, and social justice. Decades of attempts to address these big and small challenges with approaches rooted in scarcity have proven insufficient to the task.

Research at the Institute for Strategic Clarity (ISC) has identified many groups that are finding success in addressing these issues, starting from a very different perspective, one of abundance in human potential. Ecosynomics, the social science of abundance, offers robust frameworks that take what we have learned in scarcity-based agreements framed by economics and puts it within the much broader, much healthier context of abundance-based agreements.

But how can agreements be made consciously so that people can choose self-determined higher vibrancy in their agreements? We present a case study from Europe where we are in the process of guiding a group to abundance-based agreements. In doing so, we follow the Vibrancy Living Lab approach, which combines a guiding process with scientific research and social-impact creation to enable a positive contribution to the group and the community where it is embedded.

Starting from a Collapsed State

The example concerns a Community Supported Business (CSB) in a village in Germany; nine people comprising two families and many associates. While the main focus of their work resides on their CSB, they are also engaged in local education and regional politics.

Despite a great vision, the group found itself over the last years in a critical state: the financial situation was getting precarious, the group underwent some hard and energy-depleting times and some were on the edge of burning out. Furthermore, they had already started to lose belief in the meaning behind their venture and to unconsciously accept their scarce reality as given and unchangeable. With those agreements, practices and mindsets they were not able to ensure their private and professional successes.

Based on initial conversations about ecosynomic research, in early 2014, the founders of the community invited us to support them in overcoming their scarcity-driven practices by working out their own abundance-based agreements.

Raising Awareness for Agreements and Interdependencies

Our first step was to empower them and bring back the feeling of self-determination. We chose two different approaches for this. The first was to stop “just doing” and to start observing. The second was the kind of relationship we entered. In this we decided to step into an unusual role. In addition to being external coaches and consultants, we also agreed to become full members of the group. This gave us more possibility to deeply resonate with them by still being able to mirror them in their dynamics.

Resource or economic lens: “How much do we have, of what, to achieve our goals?”

Allocation or political lens: ”Who or what is in power, and who or what decides and enforces?”

Value or cultural lens: “What criteria do they use, and what is important to them?”

Organizing or social interaction lens: “What rules do they apply and how do they organize?”

These currently very distant fields have been integrated by ecosynomic research, allowing a group to understand if it is “stuck in scarcity” or “boosted by abundance.” Why did we do this, and why is this relevant? ISC research conducted in 95 countries proves abundance to be a desired state for any social system. While this seems obvious, direct measurement of this abundance is not. Without measurement, the group could neither take strategic decisions nor convince possible capital providers and shareholders of the importance of “all this fluffy abundance stuff.”

Mapping out the quality of their agreement structure allowed them to create a first understanding of how their embedded and interwoven assumptions shaped their interactions and how those interactions created the basis for the quality of their experiences and results. Understanding that, they started to see that their unpleasant experiences and poor results were a direct effect of the agreements they made on a daily basis in the four fields by (unconsciously) answering the related questions in completely opposite directions. They also started to see that by changing their embedded and interwoven assumptions and agreements they would directly change the experiences they have and the results they produce.

SIDEBAR
Measuring the benefits of and capacity for abundance gets its inspiration from the quality movement. Initially nobody knew how to assess the benefits of quality programs; this made investment decisions difficult. The innovation was to assess the cost of “no quality.” The insight was that the benefit of quality had to be at least as big as the cost of no quality. Likewise, the benefits of abundance are at least as big as the costs of scarcity, which is straightforward to measure.

After having this higher-level awareness of themselves and their context, we employed embodiment and systemic practices to open up concrete pathways for change.

Consciously Choosing Abundance-Based Agreements

Let’s have a closer look at the groups’ interrelated agreements and practices, as we saw them the day we started to be engaged with them.

After raising awareness of the current situation, the group collectively agreed to allocate resources into the development of abundance-based agreements and to explore practices that would allow them to intentionally start from abundance and collaboration rather than being unintentionally stuck in scarcity and antagonism.

Outcomes and Summary

Through raising awareness, we managed to close the gap between their wishful thinking and currently shared reality–that is, the difference between the espoused agreements and practices in contrast to the ones in use. Some concrete outcomes are:

They entered a mindset of “we do have more than enough of anything, we just have to find ways of how to manifest the potential we see into results benefiting our business and community.” They are now successfully innovating on their business model by exploring new markets, management, and leadership behaviors.

They have a high-level AND in-depth understanding of their structures and how each individual drives them. Building on that, they realized the interdependencies between the different parts of their “system” and the importance of alignment within it. Both aspects are essential preconditions to relate in an effective, efficient, and abundant way.

They have the awareness that with their scarcity-driven agreements they would by definition neither be able to have the kind of “healthy experiences” nor produce the kind of outcomes they envision.

They are much more conscious and mindful in their daily patterns, leading to more thoughtful interactions. “We now know that we are not yet able to have everything we would like to have, but we also know now what the ground is we are standing on.”

“I learned to respect my own needs and to share them with everybody in our community.”

Engaging with them, you can now a) see and feel the higher-level awareness of “why do I experience what I experience and how I can change it” and b) see and feel the positive energy and motivation to grow into the possibilities they see, which is completely different than the original drive to simply escape scarcity. They are able to do so since they experienced what it is like to work with abundance-driven agreements. Yes, they are now able to work out of this understanding and feeling, rather than just pushing away from something they do not like.

Furthermore, they not only regained trust in their own abilities and goals, but also started to reframe their shared purpose, as well as each individual’s unique contribution to the group.

We think the key learning of this case study is to take time to understand the agreements that (un)consciously drive the behavior of your business. Understanding your agreements builds the basis for lasting success and vibrant interactions, thus, having great experiences and producing above-average outcomes. Awareness, collaboration, and alignment seem to take a lot of time and energy, but there is a massive return for every minute of this investment. During our process the Japanese proverb “If hurried, go around” evolved as our guiding principle, because the fastest way is often not the straightest.

I find it striking how well the ecosynomics approach helps us in understanding our situation as farmers and as a community better, and how it helps us in overcoming obstacles in our way. In fact, for me, ecosynomics is not only a science or a method, it is somehow a path that guides us.

We started, together with Eyal Drimmer, to make the first steps in our own Harmonic Vibrancy Move. Working with Eyal Drimmer, the plan is now to expand the process, by applying for funds for a larger, 2-3 year project. The project would take a closer ecosynomic look at the performance of other CSA-farms in Germany and identify the agreements and mechanisms for CSA-farm success. We want to implement and validate this knowledge then in our own farm-community and share it within the German CSA-network, so that this knowledge can be multiplied.

At this stage, we are still looking for funding and are quite optimistic that we can find a foundation or donor for this soon. If you have an idea where we could or should apply, we are thankful for suggestions. Please send them to us at gaertnerei[at]grosshoechberg[dot]de.

I invite you to collaborate on enriching the document through adding your own experiences and in the Google Doc until the end of September. I will publish the updated version in the beginning of October.

Guest blog by Eyal Drimmer, counseling psychologist with focus on personal, group and organizational transformation and development

To support my work with groups on their Agreements Evidence Maps, I compiled a working paper with relevant information to build an Agreement Evidence Map (click here to access the Google Doc). The document is based on the text from chapters 4-6 of Ecosynomics: The Science of Abundance, different blog posts as well as some of my own thoughts and structures.

I offer it to the Vibrancy community working with Agreements Maps, and invite you to collaborate on enriching the document. The final destination of this collaborative effort is the building of a comprehensive Agreement Maps Handbook (max. 20 pages). Feel free to add your experiences and ways of working with Agreement Maps, to change or restructure the document or to leave comments with impulses and suggestions. You can work on the Google Doc in your Internet browser without installing any software and your changes are automatically saved.

In this series of brief blog posts on “Tools and Practices,” I want to share several simple tools and practices I use to introduce and work on the level of harmonic vibrancy experienced in a group. I have applied them during several workshops at companies, civil society organizations and two university classes I was teaching. I will share them one by one, always using the same format.

Most of them are based on the tools and images provided in the Ecosynomics e-course. Some of them are a creative merger of tools and practices like Appreciative Inquiry, Theory U, Learning Organization, Design Thinking, Empowerment Didactics and many others, with the frameworks and tools of Ecosynomics.

Perceived Reality Check-In

This method is adopted from a method created by my colleagues at www.scgroup.mx. The image shows the German version of the five primary relationships (x-axis) and the three levels of perceived reality (y-axis). The original image is provided in chapter 6 of the Ecosynomics e-course.

Short description: This check-in is a practice to intentionally set a starting point for the further process. After a short explanation of the five dimensions, we ask the participants to put one adhesive dot on each of the five primary relationships. Consequently, the exercise helps bring out information about the perceived level of vibrancy of the group. It also helps to visualize the issues that might be ‘in the room’ and to create an atmosphere of shared intention, inclusion, and transparency. In case the group did the free online survey in advance, this exercise helps to get a first “self-made” image of the data which can then be introduced at a later stage. It supports the group to create an emotional connection to the very cognitive-scientific visualization of the survey data. Click here for the facilitator’s guide of this exercise in the long version.

Purpose and expected learning outcomes:Thecheck-in helps participants to arrive at full presence and to focus on the content of the process. It has the potential to deepen the interaction of the group by allowing the participants to share and compare their perception of the vibrancy of the group in a simple and fast way. Participants learn: